A total solar eclipse was visible from the Northern tip of Australia on Nov. 13, 2012 at 3:35 EST. The light halo visible around the edges of the moon is the sun's atmosphere, the corona. Image courtesy of Romeo Durscher

A full solar halo — plus a dragonfly — seen above John Chumack’s observatory dome on September 15, 2013. Credit and copyright: John Chumack/Galactic Images. - http://www.universetoday.com/104791/astrophoto-full-solar-halo-and-a-dragonfly/#ixzz2f6gyk9Kc

Ptolemy's "Handy Tables," intended for practical computation became, with various modifications, the basis for later astronomical tables in Greek, Arabic, and Latin. The "Handy Tables" allow the calculation of solar, lunar, and planetary positions and eclipses of the sun and moon far more rapidly than the tables previously used

Photo of a lunar halo. The stars of Orion are in the top right, along with the constellations Taurus (the bull) above it and Canis Major (the big dog) below it. The three constellations surround the glowing lunar halo. Lunar and solar halos are caused when light passes through ice crystals formed in clouds in Earth's atmosphere. Ice crystals in a high, thin layer of cirrus clouds bend the light at a specific angle like a lens. Photo by astrophotographer Shingo Takei.